Free Craft Patterns

Mixed Up Holiday Sites

If you're looking for free craft patterns in general and aren't crafting for a particular holiday, there are some sites that provide a mash of patterns with all the holidays mixed together.

This is often a good plan because there are so many crafts that can simply be repurposed for a different holiday; for instance, you can always make holiday candle holders, decorative pots, wall hangings, etc., using the same pattern with different motifs throughout the year.

Ruby Glen is a good example of a hodgepodge of free craft patterns. This site has ideas for Christmas, Easter, Valentine's Day, Halloween and more. It also has cool ideas for reusing greeting cards as decorations, doing different things with wrapping paper and decorating for the holidays on a budget.

For a very well-organized collection of crafts for just about any holiday you can thing of, visit All Crafts. This wonderful site has free craft patterns and ideas for Chinese New Year, Groundhog Day (one of my favorite unsung holidays), Cinco de Mayo and many more. Individual pages provide craft ideas for the bigger holidays (Christmas, Easter, Halloween, Valentine's Day, Fourth of July), making this a one-stop shop for all your holiday crafting needs.

Christmas Crafts

Probably the most popular holiday for crafting is Christmas, between crafting decorations and making gifts for others. There are a ton of sites offering free craft patterns for Christmas, here are a few of the best:

• Craftown has almost 80 Christmas projects, many with pictures, ranging from ornaments to wall hangings to gift bags and decorative trees.
• North Pole Christmas has a good collection of Christmas crafts such as snowmen, angels, nativity crafts and Santas. There aren't a whole lot of patterns here, but they are cute ones.
• Imagitek has a great Christmas site that hasn't been updated lately but still offers some good ideas for crafts you can make with your kids. There are lots of fun things here, like a Christmas piñata and those groovy clay ornaments we all made as kids.

Halloween Crafts

The other major holiday for crafting is Halloween. It's also a big holiday for the kids, so a lot of the best sites for free craft patterns for Halloween have the little ones in mind:

• Making Friends has a great collection of craft patterns, from costume ideas to treat bag crafts, decorations and general holiday crafts. This site is sure to give you some good ieads for a Halloween party, fall festival or just your child's costume.
• Enchanted Learning has a good collection of crafts. masks and costumes for little ones. These might not interest older kids but are fun for preschoolers and early school-aged kiddos.
• Kids Domain has a great collection of Halloween free craft patterns, and not all of these are just for kids. The advertising on this site can get a little annoying, but for the most part it is worth it.

Easter Crafts

Easter is another fun holiday for crafting. Kids seem to love all the baby animals, and the holiday comes at a wonderful time of year for celebrating. Here are a few sites for free craft patterns for Easter:

• Danielle's Place has some very cute Easter crafts that you will love doing with your kids. There are lots of bunnies, but also some good Christian crafts if you are looking for items to remind your kids the holiday isn't all about chocolate.
• Home School Zone has a good collection of Easter craft patterns, including poems and coloring pages that could be used in a holiday activity book.
• DLTK focuses on crafts for young children, but the Easter page is especially helpful for those who need a little help retelling the Easter story to their kids or who have never dyed an egg before.